Healer
by Airforce1990
Summary: Dr. Julian Bashir and his thoughts after seven years on Deep Space 9.


Healer

The war with the Dominion is over, for over two years we have fought for our freedom, for our survival. But the war started far earlier than that, we just didn't know it. I came aboard Deep Space Nine as a young Lieutenant, Junior Grade, as a doctor, wanting to practice frontier medicine. Seven years later, I am a soldier. I am not naïve anymore, I am war harden, I am weary. I have saved many, but I have also lost more. Instead of finding frontier medicine, I found battlefield medicine. I am a healer, but I'm also a soldier and that is the crux of the matter. I am both, where I'm only supposed to be one. I didn't join Starfleet to be a warrior, I didn't join to fight. I joined Starfleet to be a doctor, to heal the sick and injured, to find cures for diseases, to help those in need of help. Now, after nearly four years of battles with the Dominion, I don't know if I'm a soldier or a doctor. But I do know that with the war being over now, I'm not a soldier anymore, I can go back to being a doctor. Though I'm not sure if I can, I saw too many horrors, saw too much inflicted on the innocent. I saw the lengths in which a species will go to, to dominate others. I saw a species willing to spill innocent blood for what they believe was their righteousness power over everyone else. How can I forget everything that had happened? To me, to my friends, to the men, women and children whose lives were changed for forever. How can I forget the pain and suffering that the Dominion put us through, forget what the Changelings took from us?

How can I move on like everyone else? How can I walk around the station and not remember the horrors that passed through the hallways? The Academy doesn't teach you how to survive after a war. It doesn't teach what to when the nightmares get to be too much, or when they become too real. Starfleet is not a military force, it is an exploration and scientific expeditionary. The Academy doesn't teach everyone to fight, it teaches astronomy and engineering, Medicine and Botany, teaches Navigation and Flying, it does not teach war tactics. It doesn't help you deal with the aftermath of the horrors of a war. The horrors that wasn't just inflicted by the enemy, but also those that you yourself chose to inflict a well. The decisions that was made and those same decisions that was carried out without the thought to those persons that it affected. The decisions that leaves invisible scars, that leaves strong men doubting themselves. Leaves those who survived the devastation stumbling through their days. The war is over, but the surviving is just beginning. We go through the motions during the day, but at night, all alone in the dark, the terror creeps into our minds, leaving us suffering in silence. Silence that has crippled us, wanting to forget everything that had happened.

But I can't, because I am supposed to be a healer, not a warrior. I am not supposed to be capable of compartmentalizing trauma like a soldier does, I am not designed to forget about the terror of battle. I am a healer who lost himself to a war that came upon him with devastation. A war that brought nightmares, both real and imagined to life. Saw actions that no person should see and felt those actions inflicted upon his own self that left more than scars. A healer that at the end of the day, at the end of the war having to go back to the job that he was actually trained for, without the day to day life of a war that he was thrust into. A healer with memories that he is wanting to forget but memories that will stay with him forever.

I will forever have the blood of the enemy staining my hands, the cries of the innocent within my reach, the scars of battle on my body. For over four years, I was a fighter, a warrior, a soldier. I will forever live with the devastation and the horrors of being a soldier. I will be labeled a hero, but I just want to be a simple man. I had dreamt of frontier medicine, of great discoveries and of greater accomplishments. Now, all I want is to go back in time and have a simpler dream. A dream of just being a healer.


End file.
